#AppDCares Philanthropy

#AppDCares Philanthropy

Eight months ago we set out to start a philanthropy program from the ground up. While it has been a recent edition to the AppDynamics culture, it has had a huge impact in its infant stage. For the past three years, we’ve participated in San Francisco Adopt-A-Family. From the beginning of FY15, AppDynamics offered employees three days of volunteer time off (VTO) as well as matching up to $250 per employee annually who give monetary donations to charity. However, we had bigger ideas and, more importantly, passionate employees who wanted to be hands on and have an even larger impact.

AppDynamics philanthropic mission statement is simple but powerful – our goal as a company is to give back to the communities we are a part of, inspiring employees to step away from the office and engage in experiences that bring us together as a company and as a community.

How do you start inspiring employees to do this? We started small, setting up some department team outings to get AppDynamics out of the office. From there, we set up a philanthropy t-shirt design contest to give the employees a voice and vision, and use the holiday season as a time to bring the community to the front of everyone’s mind.

Our first department team-building event was a group heading out to Crissy Field in San Francisco to clean up the park and beach. A grueling day of weeding, trash pickup, and trail clean up – more physical activity than we might have expected, but by the end of the day the team was closer than before and felt good about their efforts.

This was quickly followed by our Dallas office spending time at the Dallas Children’s Hospital bringing smiles to children and relief to parents. Going off of this initial success, we then hosted First Graduate students in San Francisco as they participated in a networking event to prepare for college and their future career.

We created events in the offices for the holidays participating in everything from food drives, to Toys for Tots, Adopt-A-Family, and Operation Christmas Child, which took our philanthropic efforts overseas to the United Kingdom.

By the end of FY15, AppDynamics had contributed to 14 different organizations, donated 400 pounds of food with over 200 employees participating.

In Q1, we already have two major philanthropic events in San Francisco and Dallas with a list of organizations to start working with. Teams are actively planning small group events and wearing their volunteer shirts proudly.

Our communities have contributed to AppDynamics success, and we are excited to return the favor. I couldn’t be happier to see our philanthropic mission be pursued and advanced through our team!

Want to help out? I encourage everyone to get involved in any way you can with any of the above organizations.